Jessica C. Teets

Jessica C. Teets is an Associate Professor in the Political Science Department at Middlebury College, and Associate Editor of the Journal of Chinese Political Science. Her research focuses on governance and policy experimentation in authoritarian regimes, especially the role of civil society. Teets is the author of Civil Society Under Authoritarianism: The China Model (Cambridge University Press, 2014) and editor (with William Hurst) of Local Governance Innovation in China: Experimentation, Diffusion, and Defiance (Routledge Contemporary China Series, 2014), and she has published articles in The China Quarterly, World Politics, and the Journal of Contemporary China. Teets is a fellow with the Public Intellectuals Program created by the National Committee on United States-China Relations, and is currently researching policy innovation by local governments in China.

In a surprise Sunday move, Beijing announced that the Communist Party leadership wants to abolish the two-term limit for China’s president and vice president, potentially paving the way for China’s 64-year-old President Xi Jinping to stay in power...

One of the hallmarks of Xi Jinping’s leadership has been a centralization of power across a whole range of areas of domestic politics. This week, the Chinese Communist Party’s leadership meets in Beijing for the sixth plenary session of its 18th...